17 Dec Top French Law Firms Requiring UK and US Law Degrees
I don’t know very much about French legal education, but I’m still surprised by this article, which claims that because France lacks a first-rate law school, the most prestigious French law firms are now requiring their new hires to have an American or British law degree:
It isn’t easy for corporate law firms to find qualified law-school graduates in the land of Montesquieu, one of the founders of modern Western legal theory.
“Because law schools are so weak in economics and out of touch, people who want to be corporate lawyers go to business schools,” said Ted Kamman, an American partner at Clifford Chance in Paris.
Louis Vogel, the president of France’s oldest law school at the University of Paris II Assas-Pantheon, is trying to change that…
Vogel is battling France’s two-tiered system of higher education, where top high-school graduates compete for spots in the Grandes Ecoles, which offer engineering, government and business degrees. The study of law is left to public universities that are open to anyone who has passed the “baccalaureat” high- school exit examination.
The university system prevents Vogel from selecting his students and restricts funding. Yale Law School accepted 6.9 percent of its applicants this year, has 643 students and a $660 million endowment. Paris II has 18,000 students and no endowment.
[snip]
[T]he legal profession doesn’t have the same importance in France as in many other countries. There’s one lawyer for every 2,461 Frenchmen, compared with one for every 694 Britons and one for every 320 Americans, according to United Nations statistics.
While that’s beginning to change with the surge in cross- border mergers, international firms often recruit lawyers at the Grandes Ecoles, not French law schools.
Renaud Bonnet, a recruiting partner at Jones Day in Paris, said top candidates need business or economics degrees from a Grande Ecole and an American or British law degree.
“It’s no longer enough to just do law school,” he said.
I wish the article had been more specific about the kind of UK law degree the French firms want. Is an undergraduate law degree — the LLB — enough, or do they look for a graduate degree like an LLM or MPhil? In my experience, good LLB students are just as capable as good JD students, even if they have three years less of college (the LLB normally takes four years). So I wonder if the French firms differentiate between undergraduate and graduate law degrees.
I’d be very interested in hearing the reaction of French or French-educated readers to the article.
The story is true, but it’s not about the relative quality of French / English-US law schools. Remember that lawyers in France, even in US/English law firms, will be practicing French law, so knowledge of US or English law can be useful when talking to a US client, but is largely irrelevant otherwise.
In fact, it’s all about selection. Who do you pick as a junior associate when you are a law firm? conversely, how do you get noticed by the top firms when you are a freshly qualified lawyer?
US Law schools provide that service to law firms and students alike, by having competitive entrance requirements. Therefore, once you are accepted at Yale, you pretty much have a cushy job waiting for you after graduation. France works the other way: anyone with a high school degree can start law, but you then spend the following years surviving the weeding out and trying to differentiate yourself.
The first selection is at university. Although law universities do not select their students at entrance level, only about 25 percent of first-year students will eventually reach the fourth-year. The others flunk out, especially during the first two years, that are largely designed for that purpose.
Then there is the entrance to the bar school: according to the region, only 20 to 40 per cent of students end up passing the exam.
That still leave many people standing, so a post-grad is now a practical requirement for anyone wanting to work in a law firm. At post-grad level, there is a selection process, much like in the US or UK. You apply and hope to be selected in a top course in a top university. According to how good you were during your first four years, you will be accepted in a good/bad post-grad (or not at all). Law firms have a list of post-grads with good reputations, and you had better have one of those on your CV.
That still leaves law firms with a sizeable pool to choose from.
So candidates will try to add something different. Fifteen years ago, adding a foreign degree was the hot thing. If you had an LLM or any type of foreign degree, you were above the rest. Firms liked that because (i) it means you can speak a foreign language and (ii) it means you can adapt in a foreign country. The degree itself is largely irrelevant, so an LLB should work just as well as an LLM. German or Spanish or Russian or any type of foreign degree are also welcome. However, so many people now spend a year abroad that it has become a necessity, but is not enough to make yourself really noticeable.
So students started adding business studies on top of the rest. Business schools started catering for lawyers. It is true that traditional French law graduates had little knowledge of business, so corporate law firms like people with this kind of profile.
It is not uncommon now to see young lawyers with five years of French legal studies, a business school degree, and an LLM. The trick is that law firms want young lawyers, so you should do everything at the same time in order to be no more than 25 by the time you start looking for a job.
The whole process is very much a survival test and leaves many people by the side of the road.
I could not help but notice that the persons quoted were from the Paris office of an American lawfirm and the Paris office of a UK lawfirm. And all but one of the firms that are cited in the article are persons from the french offices of non-french lawfirms.
As compared to 20 years ago when most American lawyers only had an American degree while practicing in American lawfirms in Paris, with the merger of the professions in France it seems that one finds more Americans also getting a french degree when they want to work in a lawfirm located in France.
So I suspect the forces are working both ways as to the selection of persons to work in these offices.
And the additional degree is not so much important as a degree but as a filter that suggests one is “Anglicized”.
As this kind of training abroad is expensive and is therefore likely only for the most elite students with significant funds, it appears neutral but really helps to keep out of these jobs all but the children of the french superelite.
I wonder whether french lawfirms such as Gide Loyrette Nouel or other french lawfirms as opposed to french offices of non-french lawfirm have a requirement that is so stringent. I would suspect their requirements run the other way – i.e. a French degree for the foreign lawyer in addition to the degree back home is required, but a foreign degree with a french degree is merely a plus for the french person – provided such a person comes from an elite legal family and went to the right french school(s).
Best,
Ben
Best,
Ben
I agree with everything Sylvian said. Consider the recruitment page for Freshfields’ Paris office:
“All candidates who apply for a position in Paris must have a CAPA (Bar exam), be fluent in English and preferably have a ‘double education’. For example, candidates may have studied law and conducted a business course or studied law and achieved an LLM.”
One argument may be that French law schools aren’t as good, but I think another is that these types of additional requirements will only become more prevalent for lawyers worldwide.
Consider the following commentary on the PIL field from this year’s Chambers Global:
“Due to the growing number of ICSID disputes relating to Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) and the call for expertise in this area, many firms are developing their practices in the field. However, there is a tendency for lawyers to come at this from a commercial arbitration angle rather than the more academic PIL discipline. It is hard to get the balance right, but one leading practitioner commented: ‘The smart firms have gone out and hired PIL PhD students.'”
Perhaps French law firms are simply ahead of the curve. A JD, LLB, etc. simply does not offer the skills needed to work in many areas of the modern legal market. Smart attorneys can learn on the job, but it still takes time. Law firms, global firms especially, are looking for recruits who already have the economic, PIL, tax, and/or other backgrounds necessary to do their jobs.
Another incidental (and perhaps related) point is that, these days, US law professors often have a PhD to go along with their JD.
I think this raises questions about the curriculums of primary legal education programs (the JD, LLB, Maîtrise, etc.). What do others think?
My school, Washington College of Law, has a sizable LLM program for foreign students, and increasingly I get French law students – as in ten or so this year, and 8-10 last year – in my IBT and finance classes. Plus nunmerous students from Spain, Germany, Italy, and Belgium. Part of the attraction at the moment is the exchange rate – a US education is relatively a bargain. The backgrounds of the students are not necessarily superelite French students. Some are, but I would say many more are students who came from good but not absolute top universities. As many, many of them have said to me in the last couple of years, they have found that the top positions in French law are often closed to them, and that going abroad, first via the increasingly customary and increasingly elite French-British joint legal education (Nanterre, eg), where they get their English down cold, and then to the United States for a LLM that both teaches them a lot of economics and finance that they don’t get in Europe. It allows them, as I am often told, a sort of end run around the very rigid and closed internal French system – a chance to come in from outside its rigidities. That increasingly global firms are opening offices in Paris helps a lot, but it is not the only driver. These kids describe themselves as the “dynamic young French students” who “want to go places” and aren’t afraid to take risks. I admire their drive a great deal, I must say, and my students have been first rate. They generally praise US legal education, in evaluations that are anonymous, at least at my school – the teachers are accessible, the classes directly engaging, and the approach one that integrates economics and finance into law. They often find it hard to think it a way that many American law students find pretty much second nature after the first year – in terms of incentives, anticipated results, and predictions as to outcomes. In general, I think it is a good thing – we are playing to our strengths, and they are getting something more than merely a credential.